1616-90 Various Miami Beach . Miami Beach Art Deco: When More Was More Page 1 of 4
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November 25,2001
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Miami Beach Art Deco: When More Was
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Mir PER By WAYNE CURTIS
Soaactions
SociaLANation
i! Maimed 'N 1949 the architect Morris Lapidus y.
Edaonate/On-Ed was asked to design one of his ` ,r
! Buslerismons outrageously modern hotels on Collins
--q li Avenue in Miami Beach. , • ` _
8 Al ;
DealBook "I once again used myold bagof tricks," 4i,�'f`'c''°°' ,
E-MAIL g ,
he recalled in his memoirs, published
Amino g five years before his death in January. . A
tk
Ada His tricks included "sweeping curves,a
,' Irk Wayne Curtis for The New York Times
Mstiltel woggle-shaped carpet,the old cheese The Surfcomber,a 1948 hotel in
Travel
- Colima holes in the floating ceiling and the Miami Beach that blends Art
0toin°aomnit
owswo curved walls, beanpoles hung with cages Deco and Miami Modem.
lraw YorkTodev of live birds. I also added more. . . ."
x>rt Of course, more. Mr. Lapidus's Miami Beach: Architecture,
Wetkiilla
Mato autobiography was endearingly entitled Lodging and Dining
LaAntnglietw011 "Too Much Is Never Enough," and in Information(November 25,
R al Esate NEW postwar Miami Beach, excess was the 2001)
New Black.
NYT m t50 Blending in Quickly in
MargaritaviRe(November 25,
Anted
What a time! Frank Sinatra and the Rat 2001)
"elp Cotter
!imam, Pack held court at the Fontainebleau, and
EiratankE-C rda& Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz camped out Choice Tables: In and Around
E-cards&Mon
About NYTD gital next door at the Eden Roc. Jackie South Beach,Focusing
Jobs at NYTOiaital Squarely on Food(November
Ij o Gleason chartered an entire train to move 25,2001)
NEWSPAPER the June Taylor dancers and the rest of
Hamal2aliztry the cast of his TV show to "the sun and What's Doing:In Orlando
Msset fun capital of the world." Pale snowbirds (November 25,2001)
YOUR PROFILE followed the celebrities and, living large,
Review Prop. sipped festive cocktails poolside at the Find additional information by
Eatattomiona
Lostain vast new beach resorts. selecting from the following
topics.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/travel/MODERN.html 11/24/01
Miami Beach Art Deco: When More Was More Page 2 of 4
Text Version Miami Beach in the 1950's and 60's ❑Miami Beach(Fla)
defined swank. p Spruce
Florida(USA)
Count
173
Alas, it was a brief, shining moment, and Travel and Vacations
the subsequent years proved unkind. The e
fashionable crowd drifted off. When it
returned in the late 1980's, it colonized ON SALE NOW: A Sunshine Disco
South Beach, restoring older Art Deco State of Elegance from Coconut amazing
hotels and apartments, and launching Grove to the Keys:Mandarin
Active Adi
nightclubs and sidewalk cafes. Swank Oriental Miami.The Biltmore
was redefined by places like Ian Hotel,Cheeca Lodge&morel
Schrager's Delano, a contemporary
interpretation of Art Deco with
billowing, diaphanous curtains and
minimalist furnishings. The high-rises to
the north,which form a nearly
impenetrable palisade between Collins
Avenue and the beach, tended to be 'P -R
PLE
regarded, when regarded at all, as white ° r ,
elephants and eyesores, dowdy and - --
unloved.
Wayne Curtis for The New York Times
Winged neon sign of
blix
Fashion runs in cycles, of course. "You Market on Dade Boulevard. CLIC •
hate your mother's wedding gown in to teCZ
your parents' wedding photograph," the FREE Life
architect Robert Venturi has said, "but
you love your grandmother's wedding .v
gown in your grandparents' wedding E
photograph."
The jumbo-sized 1950's and 1960's •
resorts have recently become our 'Hit i
grandmother's wedding gown. Miami's Eli 1 -...00111111111
midcentury style has been rediscovered,
and has already been endowed with a t
punchy nickname—MiMo, short for - A
Miami Modern, a period that stretches
from 1945 to the early 70's.
•
= - • _
Some signs of arrival: This year the „iv •
Collins Waterfront was officially
designated a historic district by the City Wayne Curtis for The New York Times
of Miami Beach; it encompasses dozens TOP The famous Fontainebleau
resort.BELOW The lobby at the
of buildings between 23rd and 44th newly refurbished Eden Roc.
Streets,with some outstanding examples
of midcentury modern. An engaging ADVERTS
exhibit of 79 MiMo photographs opened this fall in Miami Beach(it
runs through Dec. 16 and moves to the Municipal Art Society in New Holidays in Dul
York next March). Several MiMo resorts have been burnished back to a 90 mins north c
semblance of their old luster. And a few other MiMo-era renovations
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/travel/MODERN.html 11/24/01
it
Miami Beach Art Deco: When More Was More Page 3 of 4
—including a Ritz-Carlton in a Lapidus-designed hotel—are under Forever Adiron
way. Lake Placid GE
In late October I spent a few days exploring Miami Beach, visiting TODAYadelta
some of the MiMo hotels and attractions. While woggle-shaped carpets fares on NY flic
(free-form kidney shapes)were in lamentably short supply, I did find
that 1950's Miami is once again starting to look, well . . . pretty darn
swank.
REPRINTS &
A good starting point for a MiMo expedition is the Miami Design Chock here to order F
Preservation League at 1001 Ocean Drive in South Beach. Ask for the F'ermiseione of this.
free brochure called "Miami Beach Architectural Guide," which was
published this year. Inside is a map of the city, studded with pink dots
for notable Art Deco buildings, and red dots for MiMo, along with brief
�'I descriptions of each. It is useful for seeing the buildings by foot,by car
'i or by using the Collins Avenue bus.
The map is especially handy because, unlike the city's Deco district,
there is no distinct MiMo district. Modern buildings tend to be scattered
around Miami Beach—like the quirky 1962 Publix Market with an
elaborate winged neon sign over on Dade Boulevard, and the wonderful
Deco-modern 1948 Surfcomber at 1717 Collins Avenue(now a
Doubletree property),which benefited from a minimalist redesign in
1998.
Lincoln Road, which runs parallel to 17th Street, was the city's trendiest
shopping area up to the 1940's, when it teemed with furriers and tony
department stores. After upscale retailers migrated to Bal Harbour in
the 1950's, Mr. Lapidus was asked to create a pedestrian mall to bring
back some of its former cachet. He obliged, and in 1959 added zebra-
striped paving and elaborately angled concrete shelters.
This too slipped into decay, until a round of renovations was completed
three years ago. Today the six blocks are again filled with art galleries,
clothing stores and restaurants that are increasingly embracing a
modern aesthetic.
Above all, it has people—in the evening, the lively sidewalk cafe
scene nearly rivals that of Ocean Drive.
The Ritz-Carlton is scheduled to open next spring in the former DiLido
Hotel, at Lincoln and Collins, designed by Mr. Lapidus in 1951. Plans
call for an interior styling that blends MiMo and 1930's moderne. The
hotel is buffing up many of the original elements—like the oddly
asymmetrical porte-cochere, and the glossy black terrazzo floors.
The largest cluster of MiMo properties begins on Collins north of 23rd
Street, where the 1950's boom most dramatically reshaped the profile of
this barrier island. The Seville(2901 Collins), Sans Souci (3101
Collins)and Saxony (3201 Collins)hotels all feature classic MiMo
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/travel/MODERN.html 11/24/01
Miami Beach Art Deco: When More Was More Page 4 of 4
elements from the late 1940's and early 1950's— like swooping
balconies and powerful horizontals.
Yet these pale compared with the Fontainebleau and Eden Roc,the pair
of side- by-side resorts designed by Mr. Lapidus that remain the
Olympus and Parnassus of MiMo.
The Fontainebleau is certainly the best known. The famous main
building, constructed in 1954, arcs in a quarter circle and embraces
lushly landscaped gardens,pools and a weird but amusing octopus-
shaped water slide, which is brand new and an instant hit with kids.
1 h impeccably A thong peccab y modernist on the outside,the hotel has a
flamboyantly baroque interior, one that a visitor might reasonably
assume was inspired by a French bordello.
"True modernism was never going to work here in Miami Beach," said
Randall Robinson, a local planner and preservationist who with a
colleague, Teri D'Amico, popularized the term MiMo three years ago.
"This was a middle-class American resort, and Joe Lunch-bucket was
not going to spend money to stay in the Barcelona Pavilion," he added,
referring to the Mies van der Rohe 1929 building. "You had to be -
modern,but at the same time you had to give the vacation market what
it wanted."
Continued
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